I don’t think it’s worth paying much attention to Condoleezza Rice’s trip to Israel-Palestine. Why? Because Rice doesn’t have a chance in hell of waging a solution to the conflict.
The problem lies with the fact that the Bush administration has very little credibility amongst Palestinians. American officials have put relentless pressure on the Palestinian government to stop all violence against Israelis, to recognize Israel, to marginalize Hamas, and to agree to previous peace agreements. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has not been asked to do much of anything. They haven’t been asked to recognize the Palestinian state, to end the occupation of Palestinian land, to stop building the separation wall on Palestinian territory, nor to deconstruct their settlements in the West Bank. The Bush administration’s biased approach towards this conflict is likely to doom Rice’s attempt to broker a peace between the two sides.
Say what you will about Clinton, he was viewed a lot more favorably than Bush amongst Palestinians. And while Clinton was far from a saint when it came to this conflict, the credibility he had was due in part to the fact that he did not give the Israelis everything they wanted. Unlike Bush, Clinton did not go along with all the demands that Israel put forth. In terms of the settlements, for instance, Clinton agreed to recognize some Israeli settlements so long as there would be territorial swaps for land from the pre-1967 borders. Bush, on the other hand, has simply recognized the Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory as part of the de facto boundaries of the Israeli state.